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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Rising Towers, Falling Prices?

I would like to begin by thanking Fair Vote Canadafor sharing last week’s post on The Orange
Tory regarding some of my proposals on how to improve democracy in Ontario.
Last week’s post drove traffic to this blog to an all-time high. I am very
grateful for Fair Vote for sharing this post and my blog. I would like to
welcome my new readers, I hope you find something worthwhile to you here.

This week I want to begin a discussion about housing. I
hope to sometime soon discuss some ideas regarding social housing and housing
prices – both of which, I believe, require redress. Funny enough my local MPP
Cindy Forster was named the ONDP critic for Municipalities and Housing.

To begin the discussion I wanted to share a link to an
article by Stephen Smith at Forbes, link here.
Smith poses a simple question – does urban growth have to mean gentrification?
The reason that it is an important question is that the answer may be
counter-intuitive to some philosophies, or perhaps broadly the logic of the
market.

My friends on the right might say that the issues of high
housing costs and social housing could be addressed by reducing restrictions on
new builds and building new projects. Smith points out in his piece that new
construction is never accepted at face value as additional housing stock, but
always with increased value due to new amenities and the fact that it is not
joined by other construction.

Finally, I want to share this video of time elapsedscenes in Toronto. I think us in the GTA often overlook
how beautiful Toronto is as a city, this really highlights that. Enjoy.